Oceania (Geographic Keyword)
1-25 (240 Records)
This resource is an application for the Conference Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. The World Archaeological Congress (WAC) is a non-governmental, not-for-profit organization whose members seek to promote interest in the past in all countries, to encourage the development of regionally-based histories and to foster international academic interaction. Its aims are based on the need to recognize the historical and social roles as well as the political context of archaeology, and the need...
400 Years of History and Cross-cultural Interactions in a Ritually Mounded Landscape of South Tanna, Vanuatu (2017)
A mounded landscape in south Vanuatu provides archaeological evidence relating to chiefly performance, voyaging, and ritual transformation during a period of cross-cultural contacts spanning 400 years or more. The site of Kwaraka is located at the southern end of Tanna Island. The area has a view on clear days of the neighbouring islands Futuna and Aniwa, and there is ethnohistoric evidence of long-term patterns of interaction between Tannese people and the people of these nearby islands....
Absolute spatial reference and the grammaticalisation of perceptually salient phenomena (2002)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Addressing Neglected Narratives Through The Maritime Cultural Landscape Of Point Pearce Aboriginal Mission/Burgiyana, South Australia (2016)
This paper presents results of research based upon an oral history, archaeological and archival case study of the maritime activities at Point Pearce Aboriginal Mission/Burgiyana in South Australia—the traditional land of the Narungga people. Point Pearce was established in 1868 and has been self-managed by the community since 1966, forming the historical time period for this study; however the research also draws on pre-contact knowledges. This case study was used to assess whether the maritime...
Agent Based Modeling (ABM) Approaches to Understanding Prehistoric Forager Ecology in Tokelau (2015)
Exploring the complex relationship between humans and the environment is essential for understanding important mechanisms of cultural change. The last decade has given rise to advances in zooarchaeological research and computer-based modeling that provide tools to examine the links between environmental variability and human cultures. This paper draws on assumptions derived from evolutionary ecology using Agent Based Models (AMB), to test predictions regarding foraging and marine exploitation in...
Anthropogenically driven decline and extinction of Sapotaceae on Nuku Hiva (Marquesas Islands, East Polynesia) (2015)
The native forests of the central and eastern Pacific Islands were extensively modified by Polynesian settlers, but our understanding of these processes are generalised. In the first large study of anthropogenic forest change in the Marquesas Islands, the identification of two members of the Sapotaceae family in archaeological charcoal assemblages was notable. Plants from this taxonomic group are poorly represented in Eastern Polynesia today, and the findings of Planchonella and another species...
Application of Object-based Image Analysis of High Resolution Imagery to Identify Archaeological Features on Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) (2015)
Object-based image analysis provides a powerful tool for using remote sensing data as a means of identifying archaeological features. Object-based image analysis has multiple advantages over pixel and spectral based tools, because it isolates features in image data based on a combination of spatial, spectral, and geometric characteristics. Using high spatial and spectral resolution imagery available for Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) and the Trimble eCognition software package, we explore how...
Applications of Rat Bone Collagen Stable Isotope Analysis towards Investigating Long-term Island Socio-ecosystem Dynamics: Case studies from Mangareva (French Polynesia) and Pemba Island (Zanzibar) (2017)
Stable isotope analysis of small commensal fauna provides a novel approach to paleoecological reconstruction and investigations of human site activities. The human translocation of rat species, especially the black rat (Rattus rattus), brown rat (R. norvegicus), and Pacific rat (R. exulans), has significantly—and often deleteriously—impacted native floral and faunal communities, particularly within island ecosystems. Rats are small-bodied omnivores with limited home ranges and highly generalized...
Archaeological and paleo-environmental investigations in the Aitape area of northern Papua New Guinea, 2014 (2015)
We report on archaeological and paleo-environmental fieldwork carried out in the area around Aitape, northern Papua New Guinea during June and July of 2014, targeted at understanding human response to environmental and climatic variability during the mid- to late-Holocene. We employ a multi-proxy approach to paleo-environmental reconstruction including geochemical and paleo-botanical analysis of stream and river bank sediments to examine local manifestations of Holocene climatic variability and...
Archaeological Implications for an Agent-Based Model of Subsistence Intensification in the Western Desert of Australia (2016)
Agent-based models are useful tools for modeling decision making and its system level effects when the system being modeled is too complex to be accurately described by a simple mathematical model. This is important archaeologically because site distributions and material assemblages represent the aggregate results of many individual subsistence decisions that take place in a complex ecological and social landscape. In this poster, we present an agent-based model for subsistence intensification...
An Archaeological Pilot Study on Manihiki and Rakahanga, Two Remote Atolls in East Polynesia. (2016)
Here I report the findings of a 2015 archaeological and oral-history based reconnaissance survey of two remote Oceanic atolls. Manihiki and Rakahanga are located in the in the Northern Cook Islands of East Polynesia. This dual island system has been the subject of few systematic archaeological studies. Yet, the existing data for the atolls suggests that they may be ideal for the archaeological study of the social-ecological dynamics of sustainability and resilience in small island environments....
Archaeological Research in the Recovery of WWII MIA's on a Pacific atoll: Tarawa (2017)
Archaeological research on 538 MIA’s from WWII has been ongoing on the Pacific atoll of Tarawa over the past two years under the auspices of History Flight, an NGO. Tarawa, one of the bloodiest WWII battles in the Pacific, still has hundreds of MIA’s unaccounted for in one of the most densely populated locations on earth. History Flight, with the collaboration of professionals, para-professionals, military volunteers, DOD and the local community have been successful in locating and recovering...
Archaeology in Oceania (1978)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
The Archaeology of Anthropocene Rivers: Historic Mining and Landscape Change in Australia (2017)
The impact of gold mining on rivers in the Australian colony of Victoria during the nineteenth century provides a case study of the acceleration of human intervention in world systems characteristic of the Anthropocene. As miners used water to extract gold from the soil they also re-shaped river systems, turning rivers into artefacts that were modified and manipulated as tools in order to achieve cultural goals. The cumulative and widespread effect of mining activity is made evident through the...
The archaeology of colonialism and capitalism in the Southwest Pacific: the Compagnie Calédonienne Nouvelles-Hébrides (CCNH) on Malakula, Vanuatu. (2017)
Much of the European mapping of the South West Pacific occurs relatively late in terms of global history. In Vanuatu (ex New Hebrides) the first visits were Spanish ships in 1606. The wider archipelago was not further explored until the visit of Cook in 1774 but soon afterwards it had been incorporated into the rapidly infilling global map. The geography, climate and people had been described as had hints of the economic potential and the islands could now be discussed and dissected amongst the...
The archaeology of ship communication: Preliminary study of an early 17th-century Dutch poste restante in the Indian Ocean (2013)
On their way to the East Indies, seamen of Dutch East India Company ships chiselled messages into rocks and boulders and, at the base of these rocks, often left letters, carefully wrapped in layers of canvas and tar and sealed inside lead envelopes. The idea was that the crew of the next Dutch ship to anchor in that same place would pen down the message on the rock and collect the letters. Examples of these so-called ‘postal stones’ have been found on St Helena Island, at the Cape of Good Hope...
Artifact Networks, Cultural Transmission, and Polynesian Settlement (2015)
The colonization of Polynesia was a motivated dispersal of culturally related human populations on a massive geographic scale. The settlement of distant oceanic islands involved the development and sharing of technological information specific to local environments, including exclusively stylistic aspects of artifact design. A reassessment of artifact comparisons from a neo-Darwinian evolutionary perspective continues to provide information regarding social interaction among island communities....
Assessing Dietary Variability at Gillman Mound, South Australia using Stable Carbon and Nitrogen Isotopes (2015)
The production, distribution, and consumption of food are central to the human experience. What we eat and how we prepare, consume, and share our victuals permeates every society, past and present. Therefore, it is crucial that our study of past human societies include attention to the role of foods and diet in our observations and interpretations of archaeological and biological data. Recent research in South Australia has highlighted the need for further exploration into the social structure...
Assessing hunter-gatherer mobility in Australia's Western Desert using historic aerial imagery from the 1950s (2017)
Access to water, food, and other resources is a critical factor structuring hunter-gatherer mobility, but few landscape-level studies have examined how resource availability influences where foragers go and how long they remain at one place before moving on. Using a newly available set of aerial images from the Western Desert of Australia taken in 1953, we utilize a simple ideal-free distribution model to reconstruct forager mobility by the fire footprints they leave behind. We examine three...
Assessing Island Habitability and Land Use on Polynesia’s Smallest Islands (2015)
In a series of papers Bill Dickinson has outlined the timing of late Holocene sea level fall across the Pacific and its effects on island habitability and human settlement. He proposed that island settlement, particularly in East Polynesia, was constrained, or in some cases impossible, during the mid-Holocene sea level highstand, when low-lying islands (e.g., atolls) were awash and shallow near-shore environments restricted. Stable islets of modern configuration only developed after declining...
The Australian Historic Shipwreck Preservation Project: in-situ preservation techniques for wooden shipwrecks (2015)
The Australian Historic Shipwreck Preservation Project (AHSPP) is a three-year national project funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant. Researchers and cultural heritage managers from ten Australian state, territory and federal partners and three universities have collaborated to investigate the long-term efficacy of reburial and stabilisation of heavily impacted submerged timber sites. The AHSPP has focussed on two significant wooden shipwrecks: the colonial trader Clarence...
The Benefits of Short-Wave Infrared Imagery for Archaeological Landscape Analysis: A Case Study from Easter Island, Chile (2017)
The use of multispectral imagery is particularly effective for studying the archaeological record of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) due to the lack of vegetation and the fact that record is composed of surface distributions of rock features. Flaws (2010) has demonstrated that WorldView-2 multispectral imagery that includes the NIR band can be used to identify "lithic mulch gardens," a key component of prehistoric Rapa Nui subsistence strategies. Recently, the availability of WorldView-3...
Beyond Defense: The Political Implications of Defense in Contact-era New Guinea (2015)
At contact, New Guinea polities were uniformly at war, either episodically or permanently, with at least one of their neighbors. As a result, they all adopted significant defensive measures, commonly some mix of advanced warning systems, settlement nucleation, and natural or artificial fortifications. These measures were crucial to survival but they had numerous social and cultural implications. In this paper, I outline some of the more important of these consequences, before focusing on the...
Bioarchaeological evidence for diet in a Latte Period assemblage from Saipan, CNMI (2017)
Garapan, a Latte Period (A.D. 1000-1521) archaeological site in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, was excavated under mitigation efforts by Scientific Consultant Services, Hawaii in 2015. The recovery produced over 400 sets of skeletal remains, of which forty-eight were submitted for dietary bioarchaeological analysis in the Center for Archaeology, Materials and Applied Spectroscopy. This research focuses on the importance of marine versus terrestrial protein sources and introduced plant...
Buried in the Sand: Investigations at Ucheliungs Cave, Palau, Micronesia (2017)
Remote Oceania was one of the last major regions colonized by humans prehistorically. While there has been an increasing amount of archaeological and genetic research in the region in recent years, many parts are sorely un- or understudied. This is particularly true of Micronesia, where many questions remain as to how and when these early inhabitants settled and adapted to the area. The Palauan archipelago, which comprises hundreds of smaller uplifted limestone "Rock Islands," hosts identified...